Free hosting / Streaming your own music

Hi,
 
After the recent thread started by MetalMan about streaming your own music, I got to thinking how easy this might be. Here are some thoughts, hopefully this might help others who are giving this a go and can't be bothered with SoundClick any more!
 

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Web Space
 
Well, you're going to need somewhere to put your mp3s and website, so firstly I looked into my ISP's provision of space. It was lacking severely and insisted I used their own Site builder tool which turned out to be restrictive enough to make it unuseable.
 
I then hunted the web to see who else could provide what I wanted - free space, ftp access and no limitations on the size of files that can be uploaded (it turns out that many providers restrict you to files <= 3 or 5MB, which is no use if you're uploading high quality mp3s).
 
The best I found after a short while was 000WebHost which offered everything I was after plus a whole host of features like visitor tracking, cPanel access, templates, mySQL etc. etc. etc.
 
Loads of stuff I'll never use but really useful if you're thinking of setting up a Forum on your site too. Another good thing is that it doesn't insist on sticking banner adverts on any of your pages.
 
The only criticism I have is that the uploads are a bit slow but maybe that's my connection.
 
Note that the link I've provided above is through the affilliate program but I'm not professionally attached to these guys in any way. They simply offer a good service.
 
Embedded mp3 player
 
Next task was to find an embedded mp3 player that I could easily put on my site to serve up my music. There didn't seem to be many out there that looked good and allowed playlists for free. I decided upon XSPF Player , also recommended by LarryMcG in the earlier thread.
 
This was a breeze to get going and the only real issue I had was a mistake I made in pointing it to the right place to find my mp3 files.
 
You need a very small amount of HTML knowledge to get this thing up and running and you need to make an XML-like playlist in the XSPF format but there are some great guides out there that walk you through the process.
 

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So - after a day of messing about I have a very basic web page that streams a couple of my tunes. If you want a look go here - when I say basic, I mean basic though!
 
Next steps for me are to brush up on my HTML and image manipulation skills and create a full site. Can anyone recommend a good free image app that is good for web stuff?
 
Hopefully this will help some of you out if you decide to go down the same route,
 
Thanks for reading! 

Thanks Dog,

I haven't tried Cakewalk publisher but I'll have to give it a go - sounds good.

Quick update - I switched from XSPF player to http://www.flashmp3player.org/ its just more customiseable and seems to be quicker loading. No need for playlists either as it just scans a directory and plays all mp3s within it.

I've downloaded and used GIMP and I must say that it is a beauty of a free application. Its not great for web graphics though (or maybe I'm not great at using it!). I suppose its good for photo manipulation for the web but creating graphics from scratch turned out to be too tricky for me!

hairyjamie Quick update - I switched from XSPF player to http://www.flashmp3player.org/ its just more customiseable and seems to be quicker loading. No need for playlists either as it just scans a directory and plays all mp3s within it.

I tried the flashmp3player -- looks good on my test site but Comcast does not support PHP (a php script scans the mp3 folder) so the song list is empty.

So, make sure your provider supports PHP.   The flashmp3player info says you need PHP support but I figured that everyone(!) must have that.  I was wrong.....

--Larry

Mamabear

I just got this notice from Reverbnation about building your own website for your band in minutes.  http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/122c31aed5648f74

Hi Janet,
 
I don't think you can post a link to an email in your GoogleMail inbox as its asking me to login - would you be good enough to post the content for us all?
 
Thanks!

Thanks Janet - you're a sweetheart I'll have to take a look at some of the sitebuilder content to see what it looks like.
 
Thanks again!

Ha ha, easy mistake to make
 
I have a few friends who work in Tech support - they've told me stories that would make you feel like a computer expert!